It’s just common sense that companies who clearly communicate their understanding of the customer’s problem, and then explicitly define their value & differentiation in the context of that problem, have a distinct competitive advantage.

Unfortunately, in order to create effective contextual value and differentiation messages you first need to break down the customer’s problem into its key underlying causes or reasons. This deconstruction of the customer problem into its key causes has long been a fundamental principle of Solution Selling® because the symmetry between the problem/cause hierarchy with the solution/capability hierarchy allows companies to create problem solution maps (see diagram).
 

As this diagram shows, by clearly defining the key underlying causes of a customer problem, and then mapping your solution’s capabilities to those causes you can more clearly define the two types of value that customers want to know about:

1. Your  company’s “Generic  Value”; which is how you solve a specific cause in a way that’s  similar to your competition
2. And more importantly, your company’s “Differentiated Value”; which is how you solve a specific cause better, cheaper, or faster than your competitors.

It’s this ability to communicate both generic & differentiated value that creates customer relevant and sales ready solution centric messaging. This is why the foundation of any solution marketing strategy should be a rigorous problem solution mapping process in collaboration with sales. This will get everybody on the same page, eliminate most of the arguments between marketing and sales, and insure that the solution’s positioning and marketing messages are customer relevant, sales ready, and consistent, regardless of how they’re delivered.